


and then the ground fell out from beneath my feet

by beautifullights



Series: everyone has scars [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Action/Adventure, Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Betrayal, Captivity, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Poe Dameron, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mostly Crack, Panic Attacks, Past Torture, Psychological Torture, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 16:52:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5709895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifullights/pseuds/beautifullights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe wakes in the torture chair. Restraints lock tightly around his wrists and knees and ankles. Blinking lights illuminate the rack of needles. Rey stalks towards Poe, robes swirling around her ankles, hunter in every line of her posture. Poe struggles to breathe. He is trapped. He is going to be tortured. They are going to kill Finn. His hands are shaking in the restraints, heart hammering against his ribs, sweat dripping down his back. </p><p>This is not a nightmare. This is infinitely worse than his nightmare. </p><p>This is real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and then the ground fell out from beneath my feet

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, folks, this was one of my first fics...it's not really supposed to be part of the series. It's mostly crack. Totally over-the-top. A hot mess. Here we go.....

Their mission almost goes off without a hitch. Poe, Finn, Rey, Snap, Jessika, and Iolo run recon on Mythakros, a distant planet not too far from the Outer Rim, assessing its potential as a backup base for the Resistance. As they exit the planet’s atmosphere, however, a squadron of TIE fighters and a star destroyer ambush them, blocking them from making the jump to hyperspace. Poe, ready as ever, issues quick but calm orders. “Ok, team. Stay on the defensive. Engage only as many as you need to in order to get away from the star destroyer. As soon as you can, jump home.”

“Roger that.” Five metallic voices echo his orders, and they swoop out into battle. Poe leads the charge, keeping a sharp eye on his comrades in his radar. Snap, Jessika, and Iolo, the more experienced pilots, are the first to manage to get beyond the battleship and make the jump to hyper. Poe is in a tense dogfight with a TIE fighter, leading it away from the two remaining ships, when he hears a terrified scream in his comm. “POE!”

Poe fires off a finishing shot half by sight, half by pure desperation, already turning to see the rest of the battle. “Finn!” he roars. “What’s happening?” But he can see it already, the eerie change in the red X-wing’s trajectory as it it sucked in by the star destroyer.

“Tractor beam,” Finn gasps. “I can’t— Poe, the controls are locked. I can’t—”

“Don’t worry about it, buddy. I’ll get you outta there.” Poe narrows in on the blinking red source of the tractor beam and fires. The deflective shields absorb shot after shot without a flicker.

“Poe, don’t go any closer! You’re almost in—”

“ _Fuck._ ”

“— range,” Rey finishes, voice cracking with despair. “Poe?”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Poe repeats. This is his worst nightmare. This is real. This cannot be real. He gulps, grabs onto his squadron leader voice, and holds on tight. “Rey, return to base. Now. Tell them what happened.”

“No—” Their comms suddenly crackle with static as the First Order operatives are close enough to listen onto their channel. “ _Shit,_ ” she curses, and then jams their comms. They can’t transmit, but they can hear her— “This is my chance,” she mutters. “At last— hello, Kylo,” she gloats. “I’ve come back. I’m ready to learn from you now. Look at these two lovely gifts I’ve brought you.”

_What?_

“Excellent. I’ve been waiting for you.”

“I came to train with you. I am ready. I want to learn the Dark Side of the Force. They do not respect me, the Resistance. They think I am a little girl, useless and small.”

This cannot be true. She must be playing some sort of game, trying to get them out of there.

“I do not.” Kylo’s voice is silky, victorious. “I know that you have power, Rey. I felt it, the first time I met you. I have been waiting for you to return. And to bring such treasures with you, as well,” he croons.

Rey laughs. “I brought you the stormtrooper, FN-2187, because I knew you’d want to take proper revenge. And—will you teach me how to take answers from someone’s mind? I have wanted to do that for so long. Skywalker will not teach me,” she spits, bitter. “The Resistance does not trust me. They will not tell me any of their secrets. Dameron’s the worst— cocky asshole. I brought him so I could get him back for all of his arrogance, his condescension—” Her voice rises, filled with a genuine rage.

Poe hears the echo of Kylo’s voice, vicious and cold. _She is also a Skywalker_ , Poe realizes, with a nauseous turn of his stomach. He still remembers the day he saw that change in Ben, watched him eviscerate a small pittin with the manic glee of having full control over someone else’s pain. He heard the same glee in Kylo’s voice when he was tortured. He hears the same in Rey’s voice now. _No. No no no this must be a mistake, she must be playing a game, she’s trying to get us out of here, there must be a better explanation._

Even through the mask and the static in the comms, Poe can hear Kylo’s smug satisfaction. “Of course, of course. You are quick, and strong with the Force. You’ll learn how very quickly. It will be a pleasure to watch you raid his mind as I did.”

“I look forward to it.” The Dark taint to her voice is even stronger now. He can see her, finally, as their ships approach the hangar. She has landed, stands coolly by Kylo’s side, hands on her hips, watching Poe and Finn’s captured X-wings draw steadily nearer to the hangar.

She meets his eyes and holds them, cold and strong and confident. None of the warmth he has come to expect from her, none of the laughter, none of the friendship. She smiles slowly, staring him down, then turns to Kylo. “I have been looking forward to this for a long time.”

Kylo puts a proprietary hand on her shoulder. That’s when it hits Poe, hits him deep in his gut. She lets him leave the hand there, draws closer to Kylo, puts her own arm low around his waist, leans into him with a comfortable affection.

That is not the Rey he has known. That is not his friend. That is what betrayal looks like.

_Betrayed._

No. He cannot think about that. He cannot feel that rotting punch in the stomach, cannot regret having been too quick to trust a stranger. He is trapped in a frozen cockpit with a jammed comm, but he will not panic. He cannot panic. Their X-wings are close enough to the hangar that Poe can see into Finn’s cockpit. Finn’s visor is up, revealing eyes filled with terror, but his hands are unbuckling himself and readying his blaster. Poe does the same. They will not go down without a fight. “I love you, Finn,” he murmurs. He wants those to be his last words.

He prepares to fire.

The First Order strikes their ships with two giant vibroblasters before they even land. A fiery bolt of electricity sizzles along his X-wing, covering metal and transparisteel alike with racing fingers of lightning. It is only a heartbeat before it reaches into the ship, and touches Poe. He gasps, jerks, convulses uncontrollably in the unending blast of electricity. His blaster drops from numb fingers. His body spasms inside the cockpit, slamming against the control panel. Again he is in the chair before a masked trooper, hearing a toneless order for an increase in voltage.

The laser abruptly shuts off, leaving aftershock tremors still running through Poe. Desperately he tries to force his body to function, but his brain cannot get any messages through to his muscles. Stormtroopers are already climbing onto the cockpit, blasting the door open, dragging him out, shackling him hand and foot. By the time he manages to move his head, he has already been yanked down onto the hangar floor by two stormtroopers. Four others point blasters at him. When his neck jerks uncontrollably to the side, he sees Finn in the same treatment, held up between two troopers, legs jittering uselessly. Their helmets rattle emptily around the floor of the hangar.

Boots echo across the hangar. Suddenly Ren and Rey are in his field of vision. They stand a few paces before the prisoners, arms folded in an identical posture of victory.

 _Traitor._ Poe’s throat spasms, then finally moves. “Traitor! Betrayer!” he flings at Rey, voice rasping with effort. “You—” A stormtrooper clubs his kidney with the butt of a blaster. Poe groans, collapses forward, chokes against the pain. Neither Rey nor Ren spare him a glance.

“Come!” Kylo motions to the troopers. “Take them to my interrogation room. But first, let’s make sure there are no disturbances along the way.” He waves a hand, and—

 

 

Poe wakes in the torture chair. Restraints lock tightly around his wrists and knees and ankles. Blinking lights illuminate the rack of needles to his right. The room is large, the door to his far left—

“Finn!” Poe’s throat constricts. His friend trapped beside him, in a second chair to his left. Large dark eyes turn his way, brimming with terror. This is his nightmare. The one he is always trapped in. Finn will be tortured and killed and—

Oh. A nightmare. That’s what this is. The thought floods him with relief. He closes his eyes, calms his breathing. _You’re in your room. You’re on D’Qar. You’re safe. You’re free. Finn is ok. Everything is ok._ He breathes in, out, slowly, calmly.

He opens his eyes.

No change. He closes his eyes again, repeats the words, grounds himself as firmly as he can. _You’re in your bed. Your head is on a pillow. Finn is asleep beside you. BB-8 is charging in the corner. All is well._

He opens his eyes. Still asleep.

Why is everything different this time? The rack of needles should be on his left, the room smaller, the door directly in front of him. Even the tiles on the floor are different— larger and brighter, reflecting even more of the room around them. It always looks the same, in his dream, exactly as it was when Ren first invaded his mind _no he is not going to think about that right now because he is focusing and this is what focusing means_ —

Why would the scene be different? In all the countless variations on his dream— Finn is in the chair, not him, and he is forced to watch— he tells them everything he knows, everything that could possibly give the Resistance a hope of victory— Kylo replaces his mind with a stormtrooper’s brain, conditioned for blankness, so that he should not even grieve as he mows down everyone he has ever loved with a regulation blaster— every time, it is the same room. The same setup.

There is only one possible reason that the scene is not the same as his dream: it is not a dream.

Poe’s heart is hammering in his chest. He starts to hyperventilate. His vision blurs. He gasps out _no no no please no please_ _no_ and

“Poe!” Finn shouts, craning his head to see him. “Poe, don’t do this! You can’t panic on me now, Poe. I need you. Poe, _focus_ , banthafucker, I need you to focus for me, _please_ , Poe, don’t leave me alone here, I can’t—”

This is not a nightmare. This is infinitely worse than his nightmare because this is _not a nightmare this is real Poe is going to be tortured and he will watch Finn be tortured and they will be forced to betray the Resistance and then die a miserable death alone, bereft of their comrades, shot and then thrown out into deep space without a pressure suit._ He had been brave last time. He had been insolent. He had had no idea what was coming for him. This time he does. Poe cannot breathe.

“ _Poe_ ,” Finn groans. “It’s going to be ok, buddy. Breathe, Poe. Breathe.” Finn. Finn. He cannot panic now. He has to stay calm for Finn. “We’re gonna be all right,” Finn pleads.  

“That’s my line,” croaks Poe, and Finn laughs once with desperate relief, tears stinging his eyes. If Poe can still make jokes, they will be ok.

“I love you, Poe.” Finn’s voice is fervent, intense.

“Love you too, Finn.” Poe’s voice shakes only slightly at the end. He draws a slow, agonizing breath and calls out to the stormtroopers guarding them. “Hey, anyone want a ride? Freedom? Outer Rim? Anywhere? I can spring you guys, you know. I’m good at it. Done it before. Any takers? No? Ok, well, how about plan b, then? Why don’t you come shoot us before they can get any information out of us?”

Finn’s gut twists as Poe’s voice cracks, belying his bravado. “Poe—” The door hisses open.

 

 

Rey and Ren make an excellent matched pair. Rey’s face is cold enough to be a mask; her Jedi-apprentice robes are lighter than Kylo’s black, but no less intimidating. Rey looks from one prisoner to the other. “Well?” They can still hear a smug grin through Kylo’s mask. “Who would you like to start with?”

Rey waves a dismissive hand at Finn. “FN-2187’s useless, doesn’t know anything. I just brought him for you to have your fun with.”

“That’s not my name!” Finn growls.

Rey doesn’t even seem to hear. She stalks towards Poe, robes swirling around her ankles, _hunter_ in every line of her posture. Just like Ren. Poe struggles to breathe. He is trapped. He is going to be tortured. They are going to kill Finn. They will destroy the Resistance. This is his nightmare. His hands are shaking in the restraints, heart hammering against his ribs, sweat dripping down his back. The lights are blisteringly bright. “What do you want to know?” Rey asks, tilting her head back towards Ren. Poe can still hear the Dark Side in her voice.

“The location of the Resistance backup base, of course,” Kylo replies coolly. “We’ve got the coordinates for the main base now, thanks to you, but if we only strike that one, they’ll have a chance to evacuate. We intend to obliterate all of them this time. No survivors.”

“Ha!” Rey smiles, eyes gloating and cold. “They wouldn’t tell me where it was. They didn’t _trust_ me, didn’t _care_ —”

“I care.” Kylo’s voice through the mask holds a distinct note of lust.

“That’s why I’m here,” Rey responds. She turns back to him fluidly, runs a cool hand up and down his arm. Her body obeys his like a magnet, echoes his every move. Poe mourns the real Rey, the independent Jedi who would never take an order she doesn’t agree with, would never follow unless that’s where she wanted to go in the first place, would never submit to being touched if it was not her own idea. 

Rey snaps back to face Poe again, impassive eyes and deadly hands. He stares her down with all of the defiance he can grasp as she reaches up a hand towards him and—

Pain blisters outward from his forehead to his entire body, lancing him with fiery agony. Poe grinds his teeth against it and fights for breath. “We will never be intimidated,” he snarls at her. “You will never break us— AAAAAAGGGH” he screams, convulsing in his bonds. _Poe._ There is a voice in his head, his mind is not his own, he writhes, desperate not to give in, terror pounds in his head, shakes between his ribs, her hand jerks forward, he leans frantically away from it, the back of his skull smashes against the chair, Finn is screaming his name, pleading with Rey to stop, to torture him instead, please—

The pain is changing. He’s not sure what’s happening. She must be crawling into his mind now, infiltrating his memories, contaminating his _self_ — His body still spasms, racked with pain, but his mind is elsewhere. Distant. Separate. Numb _. Say it’s on Theliinqir._ The voice is Rey’s. He can hardly feel the pain now. He must be fading, losing it. _Poe!_ Rey shouts at him. _Theliinqir. Say it’s on Theliinqir!_ She brings both hands to bear on him now, growling, sure of her victory. His body is numb. His mind is a faraway star. His head is drawn forward, flung back against the chair. Blood drips down the back of his neck.

“Theliinqir!” Poe screams. “It’s on Theliinqir! Please, stop, _please_ , make it stop, please, please,”

Her hands fall; he collapses in his bonds, boneless and numb and broken and desperately confused. Panic still jolts his brain, jerks violently through his nerves. “ _Poe_ ,” Finn moans. “No, no, no. Oh, no. _Poe_!”

Kylo Ren chuckles low in his throat. “Excellent work, my new padawan. Excellent. Now that we have the location of the main base, thanks to you, and the backup, thanks to—” he laughs, smug, “thanks to the best _traitor_ in the Resistance, we can attack. Come, let us take the information to Supreme Leader Snoke.”

“I want them to see the planets explode,” Rey snarls. “So they can see, before they die, the full power of the First Order.”

“Of course,” Ren agrees, voice slick. “Take an Upsilon and a half-squadron with you, in case any Resistance scum try to engage. I will inform Supreme Leader Snoke of the targets. Expect to see fireworks at, oh, 1600. We do not intend to waste time.”

Rey bows. “Yes, master.” She snaps her fingers at the stormtroopers, who move to release the prisoners’ bonds—

“Shock them first,” Kylo Ren drawls. “They were so marvelously obedient on the way up here. Let’s have a repeat performance on the way back down.”

The stormtroopers aim and fire their vibroblasters again. Poe is still too numb to feel it. The troopers haul him up out of the chair, cuff his hands behind his back, aim their blasters at his spine. Ren and Rey sweep elegantly out of the room, followed closely by the troopers dragging their prisoners. Poe stumbles along between his captors, trying to get his neck to cooperate so he can at least see Finn again, see if he is still ok, or at least as ok as it got in this banthafucked mess.

Because what the _fuck_ is going on? His brain is not cooperating with him. He forcibly frog-marches his thoughts into order to try to find some sense in this craziness.

  1. The Resistance’s backup base is not on Theliinqir.
  2. Theliinqir isn’t even inhabitable, at least not without exomasks or sealed bunkers. 
  3. So why had Rey ordered him to say that?



If she has indeed told Kylo Ren the real location of the new main Resistance base, everyone in the Resistance was going to die. His stomach clenches at that— _Leia, Luke, Jessika, Snap, Chewie, his squadron, all of his comrades-in-arms—_ and then Finn, and him. Their fight is done. He has no more jokes to tell.

 _Unless she’s playing him. Unless it’s all an act._ Who knows what she said to Kylo? She had tortured Poe— _no don’t think about it focus focus FOCUS DAMN IT!—_ but she hadn’t taken anything from his head. Unless he hadn’t even been aware of it. Or if she was still in his head. A wave of intense nausea passes through him at the thought. He bends over, groaning, before the troopers kick him forward.

“I will see you soon, my padawan.” Kylo Ren takes Rey’s hand and kisses it slowly before whirling off down a separate hallway, deeper into the bowels of the star destroyer, to set the end of the Resistance in motion.

They enter the hangar. Poe’s heart hurts at the sight of his X-wing, guarded by a set of stormtroopers, grounded for good, doomed for the trash compactor. _BB-8…_ The droid, no longer incapacitated by the electric field, swivels around and beeps wildly at him.

_[POE POE POE! POE HURT POE HURT]_

Poe wants to console his friend, but he has nothing to say. This time it’s not going to be all right.

“Wait.” A fiendish grin creeps across Rey’s face; she halts, halfway across the hangar. “Once they spot us in the Upsilon, they’ll expect trouble. If we take the X-wings, we can sneak in close without them ever suspecting a thing. I’ll tell them we stole the Upsilon. You!” She points at one of their guards. “Inform Kylo Ren of the change in plans. I know how to fly an X-wing. I will direct stormtroopers to pilot the ships and give them the Resistance security codes so they can escape detection. We will return immediately after the fireworks.” While the guard relays the message on his wristcomm, Rey imperiously beckons over three more troopers and briskly informs them of their new instructions. Clearly Rey has been given clearance to issue orders to stormtroopers, no doubt in return for services rendered in the interrogation chamber.

Poe swallows a mouthful of bile.

They are marched aboard the Upsilon. Poe’s head swims with panicked memories and for a moment he can’t see and he can swear a hot wind blows sand across his face. “Poe. Breathe!” Finn gasps as a stormtrooper backhands him across the face. They are both locked to their chairs, troopers in the seats beside them, blasters still aimed to kill. They lift off and glide into space.

 

 

It always feels wrong to him to be in a ship that someone else is piloting. Unless he is so badly wounded that he cannot maintain consciousness, his hands _need_ to be on the controls, coaxing flight from welded steel. He remembers his last flight on someone else’s ship: returning from Jakku to the base. He’d thought he’d screwed up then. That was nothing.

They jump to hyperspace.

 

 

Theliinqir drifts far below them, a cold, lifeless rock close to the Outer Rim. When they exit hyperspace, Rey opens the cockpit door and enters the belly of the ship. She turns her head slowly, looking at the rows of troopers in their seats, the prisoners guarded between loaded blasters.

Rey waves a quiet hand at the troopers. “Drop your weapons,” she orders. They stand and comply, immediately. She points at two of them. “Uncuff the prisoners.” A sizzling rush of hope begins to overwhelm Poe. The cuffs drop from his wrists. He rubs them, eyes locked on Rey, standing steady and erect in her long brown robes. “Finn. Are there more handcuffs somewhere? Foot shackles, also?” Finn is staring at her, as frozen as Poe. “Finn!” Rey’s eyes flash impatiently.

“In the— in the back locker.”

“Get them, please.”

Finn rises unsteadily and backs out of the cabin, eyes still on Rey. He returns with an armful of cold steel. Rey waves a hand at the troopers again. “Put the handcuffs on. Behind your backs. Lock yourselves to the chairs.” Poe scrambles away as they obey, silently, each filing up to Finn to pick up a pair of handcuffs, then securing them on their own wrists around the metal spines of the seats. Once they are immobilized, Rey turns to Poe.

“Can you fly an Upsilon? I’d like to get the pilots locked up with them, but I can’t fly this thing by myself.”

Poe can’t speak. Rey attempts a wobbling smile, pleading for their trust. "Poe?"

“I can fly anything.” Poe’s voice is ragged as the day he met Finn, but the joyous spark does not ignite. “But if I’m flying, Finn and I are in the cockpit, and you are locked to a chair and sedated so thoroughly you cannot even touch the Force.” If they live, if she has been acting, if she can be trusted, there will be time to talk later. If she is not, and she intends to use their trust to sneak into the Resistance and kill from behind— Poe will not be party to that.

Rey’s eyes tighten in pain. “I have to maintain control of the troopers. The ones sitting here and the ones piloting the X-wings. I’m going to have them land us on Theliinqir, leave the troopers in the Upsilon, switch over to the X-wings, and jump home. I told Ren the main base was on Rallaurin. That the Resistance had invented a special type of exomask that made uninhabitable planets viable for humans. The real base will be perfectly safe. ”

The comm crackles. “Ignition in fifteen minutes.”

“Why should we trust you?” Poe rasps. “You could be planning to betray the Resistance from within. You could take our minds and make us do as you say. We would have no idea.”

“If I were doing that, you would not be able to fight me. You would not be able to choose. I am giving you that choice now. Your minds are your own. I swear it. I would not do that to you.”

“You already did.” Poe’s voice is harsh and trapped and not his own.

“Did I take anything? Force you to do anything? I _played_ him.” Rey is intense, pleading. “It was the only thing I could think of, to keep you both alive. Gain his trust and then play him. I didn’t—” Her voice cracks. “I didn’t think I could lose your trust so quickly.”

“I heard the Dark Side in your voice.” Poe’s hands clench involuntarily. “Same as I heard it in Ben’s, before he betrayed all of us. I can’t trust you anymore. I’m not sure I will ever trust you again.”

Finn’s hands are fists at his side, painfully unsure whether or not to allow himself to trust. Poe is silent, cold, numb.

Rey lifts her chin. Her lips are trembling. “I’ll have the stormtrooper pilots land this ship, then. Finn, can you find us a set of exomasks, please?”

Finn nods. Rey whirls back to the cockpit. Poe can feel the ship shift, point towards Theliinqir’s thin atmosphere. He sits for the swift ride to the planet’s surface. Finn returns with three exomasks in First Order white and black.

Poe reaches out a hand. Finn holds it.

 

 

Rey emerges from the cockpit again, followed by the two pilots. With a wave of her hand, they take the last two pairs of cuffs, sit, and lock themselves down. Finn hands Poe an exomask, looks at Rey. She looks back. Finn hesitates.

“Ignition in ten minutes.”

Hand shaking, Finn extends an exomask to Rey. Poe has to look away from the desperate gratitude in her eyes as he secures the mask to his face. They run down the gangplank as it lowers, straight to their ships. Rey must have used the Force on the troopers piloting the X-wings, because they have already climbed out. Poe does not look at their white plasteel forms, twitching on the ground in the end throes of oxygen deprivation. He does not listen to the cries of the troopers left back on the Upsilon, oxygen leaking out through the open gangplank.

He is in his X-wing. He is home. The world rattles around him, shakes, settles into place. His breath shudders, _shudders_ in his chest, and he has to put his hands over his eyes to stop the thoughts from overwhelming him, fear and relief and panic and hope. His comm crackles to life in his ear. “Poe! Come on! Get off the ground,” Finn shouts. Poe fires up the engine, running his hands over and over the controls, willing his hands to stop shaking.

“Five minutes.” Rey’s voice is back to her preternatural Jedi calm. “I will meet you back at the Resistance base. We can talk there. Please— please let me explain first.” Her voice cracks suddenly. “Don’t shoot me down. Please let me explain.”

She lifts off, tailed closely by Finn. Poe guns his engine close behind them, keeping Rey in his scopes. Just in case. He punches in the coordinates for the new Resistance base and jumps into the smooth cool dark of hyperspace, hearing a dim roar and rush of heat on their tails. His last glimpse of Theliinqir before the stars are shooting past him is a vast, bright explosion.

 

 

The planet glows green and blue below them. Poe gives his security clearance to a startled landing controller, who green-lights him but asks him to keep his channel open.

“Poe!” It’s the General, voice intense with relief. “What the hell happened, Poe—”

“Meet us by the landing pads.” Poe takes a tighter grip on his controls. “Keep everyone else out.”

Poe sits for a long moment in his cockpit after he lands, breathing deeply, grounding himself in the pressurized air-motor oil-hot steel smell of his ship. Land. Resistance base. Safe. Alive. Finally he sees Finn’s cockpit open, exhales with hot relief as his friend climbs out, back on the base, alive, unscathed. Poe flips his own cockpit open, jumps down, runs to Finn, grabs him by the shoulders, buries his face in Finn’s neck. Finn holds on tight, unsteady on his feet, shuddering under Poe’s grasp. “I love you, Finn,” Poe whispers. “I love you. Remember that, whatever happens. Please remember that. Always.”

“I love you too, Poe.” Finn’s voice is soft and sure. “We’re safe now, right? We’re home. We’re free. We're all right.” He kisses Poe with gentle lips. Poe grabs the back of his head and pulls him forward, desperate for the bruising touch that will bring him home to reality. His tongue parts Finn’s lips. His hands are still shaking.

“What in the galaxy _happened_ to you all?” Reluctantly, Poe steps back; Finn pulls him close to his side with an arm tight around his waist. The General is marching towards them, jaw tight, shoulders tense. She has emptied the base of other pilots and mechanics, as Poe asked, but Skywalker is approaching apace with her, hooded and intent, robes rippling around his compact frame. He stalks towards Rey, grabs her by the shoulders, stares her down.

“Why,” Poe hears, in a low and gritty voice, “do I sense the Dark Side on you? Rey, what the _hell_ have you been messing with?”

“Maybe you’d best start from the beginning.” The General’s low voice is an order, not a request. Poe looks at Finn, at Rey. He’s not even sure where the story starts. With Rey using Finn to get her off Jakku, deliberately leaving Kylo Ren alive so she could return for training, duplicitously earning the Resistance’s trust so she can find Skywalker and finish what Ren started? He would move to protect Luke, but he has a feeling the Jedi can defend himself. And, after all, maybe the story starts with Rey realizing both Finn and Poe were doomed, and grabbing onto the one desperate idea she could think of to save their lives and the Resistance’s secrets.

Rey tells the latter story, of course, because to tell the first one would be stupid, and she may or may not be a traitor but she is most certainly not stupid. When she reaches the part about torturing Poe, she has to stop and breathe for a moment, eyes on the cold ground before her. When she looks up at Poe, he is taken aback by the immense regret, and grief, and shame he sees in her eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Poe,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry. It was the only thing I could think of. I didn’t know how much he could sense of what I was doing, so I tried slipping into it slowly— first just causing pain, rather than reaching into your mind— I know you can stand pain, Poe. I was afraid that entering your mind, no matter how gently, would hurt you far worse. But he didn’t seem to notice, so I tried to shield your mind from the rest of your body so you wouldn’t feel anything. And then he didn’t notice that, either, so I took the risk of telling you what to say. I didn’t go into your mind, Poe. I _swear_ it. I wouldn’t do that. He did the same to me, you know that. I know how it feels.”

“No, you don’t.” Poe’s jaw clenches. “You fought back. I couldn’t. You have _no idea_ how it feels.” His voice raises with vicious anger, despite his efforts to stay calm.

Rey’s eyes brim with pain. “You’re right.” She clears her throat. “You’re right. I don’t. I’m sorry. But still, Poe, I _didn’t take anything from you._ ”

“You tortured me!” Poe lunges at her, screaming. Finn catches him from behind with an iron grip around his waist. Poe claws at his arms, blind with an overwhelming surge of rage. “I trusted you! Even though you were a Jedi, even though I knew you could— I trusted that you wouldn’t! That you were good! And then you betrayed us.” His voice cracks, hoarse with pain.

“What else could I have done, Poe?” Rey screams back, face glittering with tears. “Watched you and Finn die? Flown back to watch the entire Resistance be destroyed? Everything you’ve ever worked and fought for, everyone I know, everyone I love—” Rey chokes for breath. “I didn’t know what else to do, Poe. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She reaches towards him, stumbles to her knees, covers her face with her hands.

Poe’s breath shudders in his chest. He watches her cry. His heart is numb and full of pain.  “Promise me you will never do that again. Ever.”

Rey's eyes are rimmed with red. “I can’t promise that, Poe. I can’t let you die. I can’t let Finn die.” Unflinching, defiant, and sorrowful, she stares back at Poe. 

“I can’t trust you anymore.” Poe’s voice is low and final.

“I saved your lives!” Rey shouts at him.

“You _broke my heart_ ,” Poe growls. He feels again the overwhelming wave of terror at finding himself yet again in the chair, yet again at the mercy of a Jedi’s reaching hands.  

“I couldn’t watch you die.” Rey’s voice is hoarse as Poe’s, rasping against tears. The lines of her body are tightly shadowed by pain.

Poe sees her, suddenly, sees the tremors that run from her shoulders to her fingers, the brackets pain and fear have etched around her eyes, the exhausted sag of her shoulders. How much did it take from her, the tremendous strain of maintaining the deception against Kylo Ren? How much terror must she have felt, knowing that she was the only one of them who had a chance of fighting back against Kylo Ren? Knowing that she was untrained and unprepared?

She betrayed him. She might do it again. She might betray them all.

He, of all people, should understand how it feels to betray one’s friends against one’s will. The thought catches him in the gut, makes his breath stutter in his throat. How hard was it for the General for the entire Resistance to decide to trust him again? To trust Finn, who spent his life serving the enemy?

The only thing he can do is trust her.

It is the hardest thing he has ever done. The hardest thing he will ever do. Poe drops to his knees before her. His hands are trembling. He closes his eyes, inhales slowly, feels the concrete beneath his knees and the sky above his shoulders. Slowly, cautiously, he spreads his hands, reaches his arms out towards her, and waits. She looks at him— desperate, disbelieving, unsure. Slowly, cautiously, she leans towards him, allows him to wrap her in his arms. Her hands press tightly against his spine, grip him to the earth, return his heart to his body. He rests his head on her shoulder. Listens to her heartbeat. Breathes.

“It was a pretty good trick,” he murmurs at last. “I don’t think I’ll be laughing about it for another ten years, but it worked, and—” He is laughing, suddenly, caught by surprise, unable to stop himself. Who would he be if he did not laugh? “It was a brilliant trick. Imagine the look on his face when he hears we’re gone.”

She exhales against his shoulder, half-laughing, half-crying. “Thank you, Poe,” she whispers. “Thank you.” She grips him tightly one last time, folds him tightly into her body. At last she pulls back, stands, reaches a hand down to him. Poe can tell that she is careful to keep her palm up, trying hard not to trigger him with the image of the black leather glove. Or the image of her own work-scarred hands, reaching into his mind. It doesn’t work, but he appreciates the effort.

For a moment he just breathes, realizes it will be another long slog back to being able to sleep without nightmares. But they’re here, and they’re alive, and they’re safe again. Poe takes her hand and allows her to pull him to his feet. Finn enfolds Poe in his arms from behind, presses a soft kiss into the back of his neck. Rey jabs Finn’s side, Finn jabs her back, and like that, the spaces between them are sutured together again.

They walk back to the base together, slow but steady, step after step. Poe holds tightly to Finn’s hand, pulls him close so they are walking shoulder to shoulder. Luke turns his stern grey eyes to Rey’s and resumes his lecture, outlining a renewed training regimen so that she has more options next time. Poe hopes there will be no next time, but there might be, there always might be, they will never be truly safe until the First Order has been crushed for good. And even then, who knows. There may always be an enemy waiting to attack.

Poe clasps Rey on the shoulder before she parts for her own room, sees a desperately grateful light kindle in her face. It may take time until he is easy around her again, but they will be ok. One day. He knows it.

Back in their room, collapsed on their bed, he presses his body to Finn’s, face to face and chest to chest and hips to hips. He can feel it with aching certainty— “I’m going to have nightmares tonight, buddy,” he warns.

Finn strokes a hand down his back, pulls him even closer. “That’s ok,” Finn whispers. “I’ll wake you up. You don’t have to face this alone. I’ll be right here, bringing you home.”

Poe cups Finn’s face, looks into his eyes, sees a nightmare crouching there as well. “So will I, Finn,” he murmurs, burying his head in his lover's neck. “So will I.” Finn’s fingers entwine themselves in Poe’s dark curls, slide down to his cheek, pull his mouth up into a deep kiss. Their bodies slide into place against each other, and they are safe, and free, and whole, and together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and concrits please! Let me know what you think. 
> 
> (This is my second fanfic ever. Does the nervousness ever go away?)


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